HYDERABAD: If the Telangana government has its way, porn watchers may soon have to cross the state border to do so. Citing provisions in the IT Act, the state CID has sent a list of 1,500 porn websites to the state government to be forwarded to the Centre for blocking them. The CID is also writing to Facebook seeking to block 5,000 pages as part of its efforts to crack down on people and organisations making money through online publication of obscene content,

The committee to review women safety in Telangana, constituted by chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, suggested that viewing porn is a major contributor to crime against women and recommended blocking of obscene content that is easily available online. Subsequently, IT minister K Taraka Rama Rao also said that the Telangana government is firm on its decision to block pornographic websites.

"The list of websites containing obscene content to be blocked has been sent to the state government," Telangana CID chief Satyanarain said. To block a particular website, the Centre has to direct the department of telecommunication (DoT) to do so, which in turn orders the Internet Service Providers (ISP) to block the same. "We have sent the list to the Centre requesting it to get the websites blocked," home minister Nayani Narasimha Reddy told TOI.

In addition to seeking blocking of these websites, the CID has used special tools to identify pages carrying obscene content on Facebook and has written to it to pull down 150 pages. After those pages were removed, the CID has identified another 5,000 pages or profiles carrying obscene content and the social networking site will be asked to remove them too.

"Young adolescents are the most vulnerable to online porn. Due to easy accessibility, youngsters are increasingly getting addicted to watching porn leading to some even practising unsafe sex. This creates a psychological conflict between social values and desire, which leads to lots of problems in the young generation," Professor Meena Hariharan, director of the Centre for Health Psychology in University of Hyderabad, said.

While the Telangana government's intention appears to be good, there seems to be a problem when it comes to ISPs in blocking such websites. Two months ago, the Telangana government got the DoT to issue orders to all ISPs to block the porn website 'www.tspolice.com' which is causing a lot of embarrassment as it appears like the state police website. But till date, only a handful of the 130 odd ISPs are implementing the orders and the porn site is still accessible through various popular private ISPs like Bharati Airtel Ltd and Tata Communications.